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NOTES AND QUERIES. t n s. vi. NOV. so, 1912.
Jiofcs on 3800Rs
Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown. By Andrew Lang. (Longmans & Co.)
ONCE more we have a chance, which we welcome, to appreciate the versatility and the unfading spirit of Andrew Lang. He reads Mr. Green- wood's book ' The Shakespeare Problem Re- stated,' and sets out at once to state the many objections to the idea that a Great Unknown wrote the famous works, and got an illiterate actor to father them. Mr. Greenwood does not say that this Unknown was Bacon, but it looks as if lie meant it. At any rate, he attempts to reduce the credibility of Shakespeare's author- ship, and Mr. Lang devotes successfully a good deal of his space to questions of education, the Latin and Greek in the plays, the mistakes they contain, and some famous references to the poet in the dual character of actor and author.
Mr. Lang was not a specialist in Elizabethan literature, but he brought an exceptionally acute mind in the solution of mysteries to the inquiry, and he was a scholar who remained in touch with the world of common sense, as well as an admir- ably lucid writer. When he has finished with the Great Unknown, the existence of that person seems very unlikely. The possibilities and sup- positions which Mr. Greenwood's theory involves are shown to be no " good gifts."
Mr. Lang discovers, for instance, that ' Love's Labour's Lost ' was not necessarily written by a courtly poet, and certainly not by an historian. There are no French politics in that piece, and Dumain " appears as a courtier of his hated adversary Henri," and its author need not, any more than the modern novelist, have had a know- ledge of the fashionable life he describes. After all, kings and their associates do not talk in blank verse.
We live in a book -ridden world, as Mr. Lang hints, and we are apt, for that reason, to de- preciate the claims of oral tradition, such as that concerning Shakespeare. In this section of the inquiry Mr. Lang is not so full as he might be. He is, however, largely employed in easier, but equally necessary refutation. Some people are so foolish, it appears, as to believe that genius is a matter of education. Mr. Lang brings the case of Jeanne d'Arc to refute them. Himself an accomplished classic, he was naturally inter- ested in the education at Stratford in Shake- speare's day, which included Latin on Dr. House's system, and the question of the poet's scholar- ship. We think he makes out a perfectly satis- factory view on this point from the plays and Ben Jonson's famous dictum^ Ben was incon- sistent ; but men of letters have, alas ! no immunity from human deficiencies in that regard. Mr. Lang considers, perhaps, at excessive length t he researches of Churton Collins, and he need not haveboggled over the reference to " Alcibiades I." in ' Troilus and Cressida.' Our learned con- tributor Mr. Charles Crawford has traced the Platonic idea to the ' Nosce Teipsum ' of Sir John Davies in the Second Series of his ' Collectanea ' derived from our own columns. Mr. Crawford showed trenchantly the limits '; of Baconian research.
An interesting section concerns the Stratford
monument, and the picture of it in Dugdale's-
' Antiquities of Warwickshire,' which is so-
strangely different. Mr. Lang shows that Dug-
dale was equally careless about his reproduction
of the Carew monument. The words " populus
mceret " are omitted in the rendering of Shake-
speare's Latin epitaph, but the slip is not material.
We find the question of Shakespeare's expertness
in legal terms given up by Mr. Lang. But he
might have discovered in contemporary literature
what seem to us nowadays equally tedious and
technical references. Further, that indefatigable
Shakespearian Mrs. Stopes has found for Shake
speare an uncle who was a determined litigant.
The volume, which has been finished by a good index, shows clearly that the subject is clouded with assertions which need examination. Readers should not pass without question the mass of what we may call inferential biography on both sides ; they should seek the real facts and docu- ments, which are more numerous than is generally supposed.
Shakespeare's Richard the Second. Edited, with Introduction and Appendixes, by Henry Newbolt. " Select Plays of Shakespeare." (Oxford, Clarendon Press. )
MR. NEWBOLT'S introductory study of this play is both sane and penetrating, especially in those paragraphs where he gives it its place in the evo- lution of Shakespeare's art, and makes clear what is to be looked for in it as against both the " castigation " inflicted upon it by Johnson and the quasi-" superstition " of some of its ad- mirers. We were particularly glad to find him warning the reader against laying too much stress on the general ideas to be found in itr a warning which might wholesomely be extended to the further study of Shakespeare. His account of the characters elucidates them in a way which cannot fail to be of real use to the student, even where he comes to a rather different conclusion about them as he may easily do, for instance, in regard to Bolingbroke, whose appearance in the play as a " smooth, impeccable,, remorseless conqueror, perfectly equipped and perfectly balanced," Mr. Newbolt seems inclined to overrate.
The Introduction will hardly be appreciated 1 except by readers of some experience, yet the notes seem intended for such as have little practice in reading. The full quotations in them, from Holinshed given scene by scene as " mate- rial " are a useful feature of this edition.
Louis XVII., and Other Papers. By Philip-
Treherne. (Fisher Unwin. )
THE paper which lends its title to this little- volume discusses in a rambling way the circum- stances which defeated Naundorff's claim to be the Dauphin. We should have been glad of some statement of the authorities relied upon.. Among the rest are a sketch of Casanova, and another of Barbey d'Aurevilly ; an amusing: essay on the visit of Baron Kielmansegg to Eng- land in 1761 ; and a repetition of the well-known stoiy of the murder of Perceval in the Lobby of the House of Commons and the dream of John-. Williams.
